One Way or Another, the Clouds Will Take Your Software Testing Tools

One Way or Another, the Clouds Will Take Your Software Testing Tools

Hurricane Sandy will definitely be one for the books. It was a particularly brutal storm that strayed well beyond the traditional “hurricane region” of Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana.

The storm also stands out because of the current election cycle in the US. For the past several months, both sides of the aisle have been waging war over the role of the federal government and whether or not climate change was truly happening.

Hurricane Sandy helped to add some clarity to the debate, as evidenced by Republican Governor Christie’s wholehearted endorsement of Obama’s leadership in bringing relief to the millions of those in New Jersey who lost power (and sometimes their homes) due to the storm.

Such issues are important, but I’m not here to talk about global warming or politics. Rather, I’d like to discuss yet another important aspect for which Hurricane Sandy will forever be remembered – at least among the scores of Testuff clients in New York and New Jersey who were without power for the past week.

Software Testing Management Tools When and Where You Need Them

Despite being stranded (sometimes literally on an island), these customers managed to continue using their software application testing tools.

Many lost power at home. Nearly all lost power at their offices. And yet, they were able to test, debug, and report at 100% capacity despite the tremendous devastation left in Hurricane Sandy’s wake.

How is this possible?

Simple. All Testuff subscribers receive access to our cloud-based software testing management tools. Because we offer the suite via a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model, users don’t need to host on-site servers at their places of work. If you can find a Wifi hotspot, you can securely access all of our tools just as if you were in the office.

Now admittedly, many of our New York and New Jersey customers had to travel a bit to find that access. Like I said, most of them lost power either at home or the office (or both). But they visited friends, cafes, restaurants, libraries – pretty much anywhere and everywhere they could find a decent connection.

There was even one customer who had no power for two days and couldn’t travel at all. And yet, he managed to continue using his software application testing tools for a few extra hours by relying on battery power and 4G access. Pretty impressive.

Yet Another Reason to Love SaaS Software Application Testing

Many factors went into our decision to launch our software testing management tools via SaaS (see some of those reasons here and here). But I can honestly say that protection from large-scale natural disasters was not among our initial list of reasons.

As software testers, we’re pretty risk-averse – forever thinking about contingencies, back-ups, and what if’s. And yet, even we could never have imagined a storm of this size and scope inflicting this much damage.

The most we ever believed would happen was a massive power outage. And for this, we were ready. But the sheer destruction of Hurricane Sandy has illustrated another important benefit of cloud-based storage – data security.

After all, it’s one thing to go without electricity for a few days. Those who use on-site servers to run their software testing management tools merely lose some time and productivity as they wait for the lights to come back on.

It’s another thing all together when a storm of this magnitude floods offices and homes throughout the region. Not only do you lose productivity, but you also lose all of the tests, scripts, bugs, reports, emails, and everything else you were expecting to save.

Fortunately, our clients never came close to facing such an unthinkable scenario.

Once they were able to get to a connection (or power outlet) and sign on, their workspaces were exactly as they had left them – full of all the precious data they had accumulated over months – years – of diligent and methodical testing.